


vienna

by daykid



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Kingsman Fusion, But light angst, Kingsman AU, M/M, Mild Language, Renjun mentioned once, Violence, pinning and yearning and angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26943358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daykid/pseuds/daykid
Summary: Donghyuck doubts he’ll ever get tired of his job. The high speed chases, the near-death experiences, and the adrenaline from a mission well done can never get old. Yet, in Vienna, things are different. Time slows down when he isn’t running for his life, and there is something special in the way that Mark looks at him in the moonlight that makes Donghyuck wish he could stay there forever.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40





	vienna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [baridalive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baridalive/gifts).



> this was an old gift I finally decided to post, which is canon compliant to @ baridalive's kingsman au we started many months ago. it probably doesn't make any sense or have any reading worth if you don't follow it, so I'll leave a link here ! read lil's work first, and come back here :) or don't, and try to enjoy as much as you can
> 
> click [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23914846) to read checkmate
> 
> to lil, you're my inspiration and light. we'll always have vienna too

[VIENNA, ITALY. 2018]

“What is this?”

The necklace placed in front of Donghyuck in a small, cherry red box is a consuming shade of black. White speckles dust the matte shine like stars against the backdrop of a galaxy, glittering every which way when the light hits. It’s nestled in a white pillow, making the deep colour seem all the more intense. There lies a dainty cross, with thin arms and base affixed to a similarly black chain. Donghyuck takes it into his hands with care, despite the weight of the metal signifying that it isn’t fragile. It’s a lot like how Mark treats him behind doors when they don’t have to act tough for the missions. Donghyuck always insists that he doesn’t need to be coddled, but that has never stopped him. Turning the pendant over, Donghyuck runs his fingers over little grooves in the metal.

Two letters are engraved into the center of the cross: DC. The necklace feels a lot heavier in his hands now, a million things unspoken in the kern of two initials. Donghyuck worries for a second if he’s done anything to deserve it, he’s always been on the receiving end of Mark’s gifts without the funds to offer things in return. The apprehension shows when he chances a look up at Mark, who seems all too small in the shadows of penthouse curtains.

It’s late at night, the only lighting coming from a few candles Mark had lit in mockery of a classy dinner. They can’t afford to go out and eat in the city, being undercover agents after all, but Mark insisted that Donghyuck have the “proper Vienna experience.” That experience meant slightly cold pasta takeout delivered by Renjun in the middle of the night, without so much as an explanation of where he got it. The meal even came with a bottle of old wine, a vintage one from some prestigious winery whose name doesn’t really matter. Drinking is against mission (and even general workplace) conduct, but all Donghyuck’s inhibitions are quieted as soon as the alcohol touches his lips. Between the both of them and the promise of handover for carelessness, they didn’t have much. However, it’s enough that Donghyuck doesn’t care what’s coming out of his mouth a lot more than he usually does.

“Just a gift, Agent Gawain, strictly business,” the older jokes. With the pale moonlight against Mark’s back, a small halo forms around the crown of his head. It paints his hair in cool browns, unlike its usual raven black appearance, and makes him look soft. He looks like a Mark who lives in an alternate universe where all his round edges haven’t been sharpened into calculated steel. A kind of world that picked him up into its arms and placed butterfly kisses on his face instead of bruises. Donghyuck can’t stop staring at him, it’s almost hungry. He enjoys having Mark like this, bare-faced and bearing his heart with material things and yes, that’s a baby pink blush dusting the apples of his cheeks right now. Donghyuck relishes in it.

The younger laughs at Mark’s sorry attempt at feigned stoicism, “Well, Agent Galahad, it’s against human resources for bosses to give their colleagues gifts.” he remarks. Donghyuck’s words are sarcastic with a hint of exasperation. It’s refreshing to address Mark in that way, as if they were both juveniles again.

“What? No it’s not,” Mark asks with an incredulous expression. His eyebrows quirk up in that cute way which makes him look especially like a kicked puppy. Donghyuck just wants to squish his face and— 

“Of course it is!” he laughs a bit forcefully, “That definitely has to do with grooming your workers into liking you.”

He shoves at Mark’s chest playfully over their plates of finished food. He ignores how firm it feels. Instead, he fixates on the heat radiating from the candles on the table between them. Donghyuck decides it’s the sole reason for why he feels so hot right now, even if they’ve melted enough to be useless. Next to the slowly forming mass of wax, the cross necklace is abandoned to its box and glittering in the candlelight. He tries not to look at it.

“So you’re saying you don’t like me already?” Mark frowns in all seriousness.

Donghyuck clicks his tongue with fake irritation. Mark loves to ask stupid questions he already knows the answers to, and that fact doesn’t stop Donghyuck from getting slightly flustered. Okay, maybe not slightly. He focuses on controlling his breath, figuring that if he holds it long enough all the butterflies in his stomach will suffocate. Eventually he’ll have to dampen this small flame in his heart, with their line of work, and more importantly their friendship, having no time for relationships. Besides, if Mark ever liked him— which he doesn’t— Donghyuck wouldn’t be able to be the kind of person he needs. Mark deserves the type of someone who wants to give themselves wholly for him, and Donghyuck in all his self-preservation just isn’t capable of it. Maybe it’s a bit selfish.

“Well, isn’t that what the gifts are for?” the younger deflects back just to fill his contemplative silence, “If you really wanted to win my heart over you could’ve repaired my motorcycle after you trashed it in Dublin.”

A beat of quiet. Mark has the audacity to look a bit pained by Donghyuck’s words. It’s not a total surprise that he’s taking the comment too seriously, which is a bit annoying. Mark liked to interpret everything that Donghyuck said as something that always had another meaning. It’s always “I’m saying one thing but I mean another” apparently when it’s coming out of his mouth. Given, it definitely is like that, but for a reason. He’s a lighthearted person; he’s fun and he’s happy-go-lucky. It wouldn’t be very Donghyuck-y to be serious. 

The elder doesn’t reply which only makes Donghyuck’s poisonous guilt crawl all the way up his throat. An apology threatens to spill out of him like an overturned drink when Mark pulls out a similar red velvet box from his pocket. He opens it with a slowness reserved for tortoises and especially dingy electric scooters, something that is absolutely useless because Donghyuck knows what’s inside. Even so, he indulges his friend’s dramatics, watching in agonizing patience as Mark reveals a cross identical to his own, but in grey.

“I’m not your boss, Duckie,” Mark says softly as he turns the cross over in his hand. In the same spot as Donghyuck’s necklace, it reads “UK.” The elder stares at the necklace in his hand, which Donghyuck is grateful for since he probably can’t keep his emotions in on the wine. Years of unrequited affection threaten to jump out of his mouth like eager grasshoppers in new spring rain.

He swallows it, “Of course you are—”

“No.” Mark cuts him off. It’s odd. Mark always talks like he has places to be and things he’d rather be doing, but is never curt. He always lets his team speak during meetings when he could say it all by himself and smarter. It’s the kind of attitude that is wholly selfless— just another thing about Mark that Donghyuck wishes he could have. In this one moment of Mark wanting his opinion to be voiced over his own, quite literally the only opinion Mark puts on a pedestal, Donghyuck can’t find it in him to be mad about it. 

“We’re partners,” Mark says, finishing his thought, “First and always.”

Stunned again, Donghyuck can only follow up with: “Oh.”

Mark meets his gaze then, expression betraying nothing. It’s actually kind of annoying how he can just say things like this and not be phased by it. It’s always been Mark rendering Donghyuck speechless when it matters the most. By some sadistic gravity that treats Mark as if he’s the center of the universe, Donghyuck finds himself leaning in. The loveseats they’re sitting on aren’t very far apart, about an arm’s length, so the younger finds himself in Mark’s space. The latter isn’t one for closeness, his torturous past preventing, but once again, it could be the wine.

“Haechannie,” Mark sighs into the space between them, “close your eyes?”

It’s hard to say no when Mark calls him that.

Haechannie. Full Sun. It’s the name Mark called him while he was bleeding out in Washington and what he accidentally muttered while he stumbled into the Kingsman foyer the first time they met. Donghyuck was eighteen, standing on the front porch of the base at six in the morning. The sun was at his back, casting an elongated shadow into the ground alongside dill pickle green grass. After gathering up enough courage to knock on towering doors, a head of messy hair greeted him in baby blue fleece pajamas. Mark was shorter then, though taller than him still, and admittedly was the last person Donghyuck would ever think of to run an underground spy unit. He looked like everyone else, honestly. It would be wrong of Donghyuck to say he wasn’t disappointed, especially when Mark proved to need a lot of improvements to get where he is now. The elder was never the leader before, having been the youngest on his previous team. He’d always been the one being looked after and it translated into his beginning career with DREAM. He struggled to keep an eye on hyperactive (not to mention, licensed to kill) teenagers.

“Why?” he asks instead, because really, why? A million images pass through Donghyuck’s mind, all things he’s thought of before in the solidarity of his subconscious, and it makes his heart stutter. Thoughts of Mark leaning in, Mark casting a gaze down at his lips shyly, Mark kissing him. Evil, evil thoughts. Blinding and consuming thoughts.

Mark just laughs instead of all those things, and Donghyuck swears he feels the breaths from it fanning out on his cheeks. That sentiment is a bit gross, but a testament to how close they are nonetheless.

“Don’t be difficult, just close your eyes.”

Donghyuck tries to laugh back but it comes out shaky. Knowing Mark, he won’t mention it. 

“Fine,” he concedes, obliging his friend again. In the darkness behind his lids, the thoughts he’s having are all the more vibrant. He feels vulnerable, their job requiring they always sleep with one eye open and being attentive. There’s something a lot more special in offering himself to Mark like this, though the act is innocent in itself. It feels like Donghyuck is laying everything out on the table with no idea if Mark is going to accept it or not. He trusts him, and that’s all he can say.

He hears Mark shuffle around him, maybe getting closer maybe not. Then, he feels the hair on the back of his neck ruffle and what could only be Mark’s hands hovering around it. His heart rate picks up again, hands white-knucked on the armchair. Is this really happening? Did he really spend all night denying the possibilities of Mark reciprocating his feelings only to be duped out? It seems like a sick kind of joke the universe would play on him.

Donghyuck’s questioning ends as he feels a weight against his chest. The familiar mass of a chain rests at the back of his neck like it’s always been there. Realizing that Mark isn’t going to kiss him and just put his necklace on instead somehow puts Donghyuck at ease. (Nothing has to change, he thinks.) He opens his eyes to see his friend pulling his hands away from the back of Donghyuck’s head. He doesn’t comment on the elder’s pinkening ears. They’re still close, but now Donghyuck faces a realization he’d never had to entertain before. He can feel his heart bend at a pseudo-rejection, but never snap. Somehow in the whirlpool of emotions behind Mark’s eyes, there's an infinite amount of answers and infinitely more questions.

“You know,” Mark says, turning his look to the skyline, “there’s a song that says Vienna waits for you. I think that we can always have this… you know, the memories.”

The memories. DC. UK. Vienna now. Moments in between the bustle of missions and fighting and running. Moments away from their teammates eyes, away from the GPS tracking and Kingsman, from everything. These are the only places Donghyuck can have Mark: in secrecy. Even if they quit their jobs, they’d have to hide out in some secluded house in the middle of nowhere. Is that what Donghyuck wants? He’s reminded once again of the alternate world where Mark grew up normally and, more importantly, never met him. Maybe in that universe they would’ve met under different circumstances and been happy. He wouldn’t feel like… this. Like his heart was being torn right out of his chest and melted down into a cross pendant.

Donghyuck knows what he has to do. If he can’t have Mark the way he wants to, he’ll be the best damn colleague, partner, and best friend he could be. He’ll tend to Mark’s heart and sew up all the cracks he’s too prideful to do himself. He’ll save his life over and over again no matter what the cost is, because it’s the least he can give him. If Donghyuck can’t give him his heart, he can have every other fucking organ.

“I guess we’ll always have Vienna then,” Donghyuck says with finality. He feels a breath of life course through his veins, equal parts invigorating and terrifying. He’s never felt this way before— never thought of anything with so much certainty before— so it must mean something.

Looking at Mark, Donghyuck figures out what love is. He feels love’s weight against his chest and how it burns into his skin like a hot iron. He sees love look out the ceiling-high glass window of their temporary home, all solemn and absolutely beautiful. He tastes love on his tongue with the aftermath of wine and pasta and things still left unsaid. After twenty years of being alive, he finally finds it. 

In the same moment, he learns how to let it go.


End file.
